I grew up in a working class family in three working class suburbs in the north of Melbourne. Even in the 1970's and 80's it was multicultural, Australians, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Turks, and at school there were some Lebanese. The smallest street I lived on had only 6 houses in it, Greeks, Australians, an Italian Husband and English Mother, Australians, Yugoslav and Italians. The only Asians were at the Chinese restaurant and the darkest people I knew were Greeks, some of whom looked Indian more than European.

Violence was rare and crime was primarily property crime, although property crime was quite high. People lived side by side and shopped at the same shops and were friendly in the street, but at the same time each socialized in their own clubs and churches. The Turks I should add were very secular, I didn't even know they were Muslim until I was a teenager. At school there were ethnic tensions but often between other ethnic groups, but in hindsight rarely did it amount to much.

I first came to know about politics in the early 1980's, during what historians now call the Second Cold War, when tensions were high between the West and the Communist world. I knew we had enemies and I knew that some people in my country gave much aid and comfort to those enemies. A big controversy at the time were nuclear weapons. I always wondered why they protested American nuclear weapons but never the Soviet or Chinese ones. I also wondered why the media always showed the anti-Vietnam War protesters as the good guys. What became clear to me was that they had picked a side and it wasn't my countries side....it wasn't my side either.

I knew from an early age that I was a Patriot, and living amongst other ethnic groups I also knew I was Australian. That I wasn't Greek or Italian or any other nationality and I learnt at an early age that they weren't Australian. Don't get me wrong I didn't hate any of these people as I said earlier they were in the main friendly and good people, but they weren't my people. They were foreign people who lived in my country.

Around the same time I saw something happen that was quite strange. Many of the Greeks, Yugoslavs etc. who worked with my Step-Father had enough money to return home, in most cases they hadn't been home in decades. Before they left they were very strongly Greek or Yugoslav but when they came back their attitude had change completely. When they came back they started calling themselves Australians. They had found out that their homeland had changed, just as everywhere else had, that the things they didn't like about Australia were often the same or worse back in the old country and that the life they had here was much better then the life they could have had if they had stayed. This change in attitude helped a great deal as they assimilated.

But the Australian Government wasn't happy with that, no they wanted more immigration and from more countries. The reason so many people point to Australia as a Multicultural success story was because most of the immigrants were European and in time they assimilated. Starting in the 1970's the Australian Government has decided to bring in primarily non-European immigrants and to encourage them not to assimilate. While at the same time having a large unemployment problem. Nearly all of the current problems with immigration can be traced back to this starting point.

So from as early as I was interested in politics I knew I wasn't on the Left, that must mean that I was a Conservative. And I probably would have called myself such, although now that I look back on it I also had a lot of Classical Liberal ideals. On the Conservative side I was a Monarchist, made much easier by being born in a Constitutional Monarchy, I was always sceptical of Feminism, I have always thought that a womens highest calling was as a Wife and Mother. That being an accountant was more important always seemed wrong to me.

But I also had a number of Classical Liberal ideals, I was a Civic Patriot, I was seduced by the idea of Equality, I knew I didn't support Communism or Socialism so I thought Free Trade might be the answer and while I was never a Crusader I accepted Global Warming. Last and I now realize the worst was that at the back of my mind was the idea that one day there might be a perfect society. I admit it is such a compelling idea that what you believe might one day result in perfection. But it's also at one and the same time a stupid idea because common sense and your own person experience should tell you that such a thing is simply not possible. What I find interesting is that I could see that in the ideas of others but not that it also lurked in mine as well.

Although I was never a Liberal Party supporter, I remember seeing a very small article in the newspaper, sometime around 1985. It was about the Victorian State Conference who had voted that they wanted Capital Punishment brought back, but not a single Liberal Member of Parliament would support it. Even as a teenager I saw that the Liberal Party didn't represent it's members and if it didn't support them it sure didn't support anyone who wasn't a member.

My first real taste of reality was when I left school, as it is for most of us. Unemployment awaited me as it did for so many. No job, no hope of a job and no women. The truth is that a man needs a job to hold on to a women. He needs money, he needs hope and he needs a future. But for the working class men of my generation we faced the twin challenge of immigrants getting the lower down jobs and women getting the higher up jobs. It would be a rare man who has not had a period of unemployment. And with unemployment comes hopelessness and loneliness and poverty. For some that poverty is much more than a lack of money, I was lucky as I never went that low.

I had jobs and unemployment and I went as an adult to University to get a degree that taught me alot, kept me busy but that never helped. That is this generations burden, the worthless degree. I had a long term relationship that ended many years ago. I've had my share of ups and downs. But I kept quite close to what I had always believed.

Over time I got sick of the constant lies I kept hearing. That we needed more immigration because it helped the economy, but it wasn't helping me and I didn't see it helping anyone else in the unemployment line. That the real problem with Multiculturalism was that Whites were racist, that we were not tolerant, hold on 1/3rd of Australia's population was born overseas and we aren't tolerant! You would have to be a complete moron to believe that, sadly we have many more complete morons than we really require. It's also abit much to be constantly told how discriminated against women and immigrants are when they get the job that you require, and this keeps happening decade after decade. Until 2006 I accepted Global Warming without really thinking about it and one day my Mother is watching the news and she says "Another story on Global Warming!" and to my own surprise I replied "It's probably not even true". After that I started to think about it and I remembered all the horror stories we were told when Global Warming first started being talked about and how that time was now. But the oceans hadn't risen, the polar bears weren't extinct. In short they lied.

In 2010 I was very upset about the direction Australia was heading, so I decided to look on the internet to find some kindred spirit. I found Oz Conservative and contacted Mr. Richardson and we met up. Since then we have stayed in contact and see each other a few times a year, first with the Eltham Traditions and now with the Melbourne Traditionalist. But as I read more of his site I realized I had things I wanted to say and he was very supportive. He told me that one thing that would happen was that I would do alot of thinking and that it would really clear up my thinking. I was sceptical but he was right, my thinking is much clearer, things I had only vaguely thought about I had to deeply think about. I had to make sure that the things I wrote made sense to both me and to my readers. In doing that I came to understand Liberalism alot more and I came to understand Conservatism more. I realized what they had in common and where they differed. It finally ended most of my Classical Liberal ways, I won't say all as we are bathed in Liberalism from birth.

So have I always been a Conservative? The answer is no, but I'm there now.

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4 comments:

I grew up in a working class family in three working class suburbs in the north of Melbourne. Even in the 1970's and 80's it was multicultural, Australians, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Turks, and at school there were some Lebanese.

I grew up in a suburb in southern Sydney. It was a kind of hybrid - mainly prosperous working class people but with low-level white collar workers as well. At my school there were a handful of Italians and Greeks. But it was more than 90 percent Anglo. There was a Lebanese Catholic family in our street but the family had been in Australia since about the mid-19th century and they were pretty thoroughly assimilated. The only Asians were the family who ran the local Chinese restaurant. They were very well-liked.

There was zero ethnic tension. That's the level at which multiculturalism works - when immigrants make up less than 5 percent of the population in a community everyone gets along fine. Once the proportion increases above that level you start to get tensions.

It's worth pointing out that I grew up in pre-Oil Crisis Australia. The 1973 Oil Crisis and the resulting economic meltdown was in my opinion a pivotal moment. Prior to that we had slowly but steadily increasing prosperity. Unemployment was virtually unknown. People tended to get a job and stay with the same employer for life. People saved their money. My parents owned their house (not a mansion just a fibro house but perfectly comfortable) outright and they owned a car (not a new car but a late-model used car). They had no debts. No debts at all. All my school friends had parents who were married. Single mothers were so rare that I wasn't aware of any. There were no drugs at my school. It was a stable peaceful community.

By the time I entered the workforce the Oil Crisis had hit and the economy had tanked. Whitlam had started paying welfare to single mothers. Malcolm Fraser had announced that multiculturalism was the future. Within a few short years the country had entered on its long downward slide.

Global warming was one of the issues that caused me to abandon my youthful leftism. I started noticing that it was being pushed entirely by people with a political agenda, and that the solution always seemed to involve more socialism, more government, more spending and ultimately world government. It seemed to have nothing whatever to do with actual science.

"I grew up in a suburb in southern Sydney. It was a kind of hybrid - mainly prosperous working class people but with low-level white collar workers as well."

That area where I grew up [in America] sounds very much like northern Sydney. More prosperous perhaps but having a mix of wealthy, professionals and working class people, but without any pretense of class envy or hatred. Also that spot where the number of serious crimes per year was one.

To borrow a quote from above, "I want to stop feeling like the last sane man in the asylum"...apparently we're cut from the same cloth for this is the best essay I've read all week! I have some liberal friends that I've known all my life and when we're all in one room I feel like the last sane guy in the asylum. One of them once asked me if I was still posting all that junk on the Internet...now that all my junk is reflecting reality the room full of liberals are deafly quiet. Good post...thanks, I'll be posting it over at my website shortly.Norm